Civil Rights Movements & the Law

"This book starts the conversation about what attorneys can do to improve both health and justice outcomes for people of diverse backgrounds who have mental illness. Focusing on the role of litigators working in the criminal justice system-particularly prosecutors and defense attorneys-this book offers an overview of foundational concepts, lawyering skills, and legal theories that attorneys can use in day-to-day practice as they work toward achieving fair and equitable access to justice for all"--

The Black woman's cells, taken in 1951 without her consent, spurred medical advances worth billions. Now a judge has to decide if her family is entitled to a share of the profits.

In Everyday Violence against Black and Latinx LGBT Communities, Siobhan Brooks argues that hate crimes and violence against Black and Latinx LGBT people are the products of institutions and ideologies that exist both outside and inside of Black and Latinx communities. Brooks analyzes families, educational systems, healthcare industries, and religious spaces as institutions that can perpetuate and transform the political and cultural beliefs and attitudes that engender violence toward LGBT Black and Latinx people--back cover.

First published in 1999, the groundbreaking Exile and Pride is essential to the history and future of disability politics. Eli Clare's revelatory writing about his experiences as a white disabled genderqueer activist/writer established him as one of the leading writers on the intersections of queerness and disability and permanently changed the landscape of disability politics and queer liberation. With a poet's devotion to truth and an activist's demand for justice, Clare deftly unspools the multiple histories from which our ever-evolving sense of self unfolds. His essays weave together memoir, history, and political thinking to explore meanings and experiences of home: home as place, community, bodies, identity, and activism. Here readers will find an intersectional framework for understanding how we actually live with the daily hydraulics of oppression, power, and resistance. At the root of Clare's exploration of environmental destruction and capitalism, sexuality and institutional violence, gender and the body politic, is a call for social justice movements that are truly accessible to everyone. With heart and hammer, Exile and Pride pries open a window onto a world where our whole selves, in all their complexity, can be realized, loved, and embraced.

Women’s History Month is a celebration of women’s contributions to history, culture and society and has been observed annually in the month of March in the

Former East Liverpool police officer Christopher Green has filed a civil rights lawsuit in federal court against the City of East Liverpool, the city’s administration and multiple police officers. The lawsuit, filed March 6, alleges Green was wrongfully fired from his position as retaliation against him for reporting on the alleged misconduct of fellow officers […]

Victim Services in Colorado Examined From an Equity Perspective

WHO WE ARE We're people convicted of crime, survivors of crime, and the families and allies of both who advocate and organize for public safety strategies that are more effective and just. Learn More MAKING CHANGE Through a new vision and an aggressive agenda, we’re

Colorado Criminal Justice Reform Coalition points to a lack of racial diversity among staff at victims' services organizations

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Justice Department is reviewing its policies on housing transgender inmates in the federal prison system after protections for transgender prisoners were rolled back in the Trump administration, The Associated Press has learned.

"In Black Feminism Reimagined Jennifer C. Nash reframes black feminism's engagement with intersectionality, often celebrated as its primary intellectual and political contribution to feminist theory. Charting the institutional history and contemporary uses of intersectionality in the academy, Nash outlines how women's studies has both elevated intersectionality to the discipline's primary program-building initiative and cast intersectionality as a threat to feminism's coherence. As intersectionality has become a central feminist preoccupation, Nash argues that black feminism has been marked by a single affect--defensiveness--manifested by efforts to police intersectionality's usages and circulations. Nash contends that only by letting go of this deeply alluring protectionist stance, the desire to make property of knowledge, can black feminists reimagine intellectual production in ways that unleash black feminist theory's visionary world-making possibilities." -- Publisher's description

Listen to this episode from Women at Work on Spotify. As we wait for company leaders to make good on the anti-racism commitments they made earlier this year, we check in with four Black women about how their work lives have and haven’t changed. Then we talk with an expert who helps us understand how to keep pushing forward and supporting our Black colleagues while we wait for long-overdue change.

In 1972, the former Black Panther was facing the death penalty. Five decades after the campaign for her release went global, she still believes people are the ‘motors of history’

Here at the Daniel F. Cracchiolo Law Library circulation desk, we serve as a home base to the James E. Rogers College of Law students and public patrons. As some of the first faces you see when you walk in, we are the first to answer any questions you may have on course textbooks, locating resources, or most importantly Lost & Found. However, rarely do we get questions about our additional resources and collections here in the library. As an LIS professional and advocate of continual learning, I’m often eager to encourage students to take a moment to explore all that our Libraries has to offer. That is why in recognition and celebration of Hispanic Heritage month, we at the circulation desk are going to take a moment explore the rich history of why we celebrate as well as highlight some of the exciting stories and collections we have available on campus.

The Daniel F. Cracchiolo Law Library is proud to partner with the Jewish Law Student Association (JLSA) to celebrate Jewish American Heritage Month. Starting this week and throughout the entire month of May, we have set up a book display of relevant and insightful titles chosen by two JLSA members, Brendan Cotta and Sequoia Kay Hill. I had the pleasure of interviewing both students about the importance of such celebration and visible representation at the College of Law. Please do not forget to come to the library and peruse the books by our entrance. For your reference, I have also included the entire list of the books on display at the end of this post.

Day of the Dead (Día de Muertos) The Day of the Dead (el Día de los Muertos), is a Mexican holiday where families welcome back the souls of their deceased relatives for a brief reunion that includes food, drink and celebration. A blend of Mesoamerican ritual, European religion and Spanish culture. The holiday is celebrated each year from October 31- November 2. While October 31 is Halloween, November 1 is "el Dia de los Inocentes," or the day of the children who have passed away, and All Saints Day. November 2 is All Souls Day or the Day of the Dead. According to tradition, the gates of heaven are open at midnight on October 31 and the spirits of children can rejoin their families for 24 hours. The spirits of adults can do the same on November 2.

"Dahlia Lithwick, one of the nation's foremost legal commentators, tells the gripping and heroic story of the women lawyers who fought the racism, sexism, and xenophobia of Donald Trump's presidency-and won. After the sudden shock of Donald Trump's victory over Hillary Clinton in 2016, many Americans felt lost and uncertain. It was clear he and his administration were going to pursue a series of retrograde, devastating policies. What could be done? Immediately, women lawyers all around the country, independently of each other, sprang into action, and they had a common goal: they weren't going to stand by in the face of injustice, while Trump, Mitch McConnell, and the Republican party did everything in their power to remake the judiciary in their own conservative image. Over the next four years, the women worked tirelessly to hold the line against the most chaotic and malign presidency in living memory. There was Sally Yates, the acting attorney general of the United States, who refused to sign off on the Muslim travel ban. And Becca Heller, the founder of a refugee assistance program who brought the fight over the travel ban to the airports. And Roberta Kaplan, the famed commercial litigator, who sued the neo-Nazis in Charlottesville. And, of course, Stacey Abrams, whose efforts to protect the voting rights of millions of Georgians may well have been what won the Senate for the Democrats in 2020. These are just a handful of the stories Lithwick dramatizes in thrilling detail to tell a brand-new and deeply inspiring account of the Trump years. With unparalleled access to her subjects, she has written a luminous book, not about the villains of the Trump years, but about the heroes. A celebration of the tireless efforts, legal ingenuity, and indefatigable spirit of the women whose work all too often went unrecognized at the time, Lady Justice is destined to be treasured and passed from hand to hand for generations to come, not just among lawyers and law students, but among all optimistic and hopeful Americans"--

"[This book] presents a collection of essays that examines how gender, as a category of identity, must continually be understood in relation to how structures of inequality define and shape its meaning. It asks how notions of 'justice' shape gender identity and whether the legal justice system itself privileges notions of gender or is itself gendered. Shaped by politics and policy, these essays contribute to understanding how theoretical practices of intersectionality relate to structures of inequality and relations formed as a result of their interaction. Given its theme, the collection's essays examine theoretical practices of intersectional identity at the nexus of 'gender and justice' that might also relate to issues of sexuality, race, class, age, and ability"--

Paul Austin and Tenisha Tate-Austin alleged that an appraiser undervalued their home by nearly $500,000. They got a higher appraisal after they removed evidence that a Black family lived in the home.

Prosecutors in Atlanta have charged 23 forest defenders with “domestic terrorism” after their arrests late Sunday at a festival near the site of Cop City, a massive police training facility being built in the Weelaunee Forest. The arrests followed clashes between police and protesters on Sunday afternoon and came less than two months after Atlanta police shot and killed Manuel “Tortuguita” Terán, a 26-year-old environmental defender. For an update on the growing movement to fight Cop City in Atlanta, we’re joined by Micah Herskind, a local community organizer, and Kamau Franklin, founder of Community Movement Builders.

Mississippi’s Republican majority in the state Legislature has put forth a slew of bills in recent months to put the majority-Black capital of Jackson under a white-led superstructure. Under the proposed bills, the Capitol Police would be expanded and given greater authority over much of Jackson without being accountable to local leaders or residents, and a separate court system would be set up in the city, composed of judges appointed directly by white state officials. This comes after Jackson suffered a number of water crises in recent years stemming from systematic disinvestment by the state, and after the federal government approved $600 million late last year to address the city’s infrastructure problems. “These bills are an attack on Black leadership, a way to seize power of a majority-Black city which cannot be seized democratically through an election,” says Jackson Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba. We also speak with community activist Makani Themba, who described the state’s plans in a recent piece for The Nation as “Apartheid American-Style.”

The Department of Justice has released a scathing report accusing the Louisville, Kentucky, police department of unlawfully discriminating against the city’s Black population, as well as against people with behavioral health disabilities. The report concludes an investigation that began after the police killing of Breonna Taylor, who was shot dead in her own home during a no-knock police raid on March 13, 2020. The DOJ also announced the establishment of a consent decree with Louisville police and an independent monitor who will oversee police reforms. “What we have are systems that absolutely need to be disrupted,” says Sadiqa Reynolds, longtime attorney and community activist in Louisville.

The Borderlands are both geographical and cultural spaces. This fluid space between worlds is a place of cultural wealth that hosts several communities. This libguide, the first of many centered on the people of the Borderlands, looks at the experiences of Black people in the Borderlands, from Baja, California to Tamaulipas, Mexico.

Louisville Metro Police routinely used excessive force such as neck restraints, a report finds.

More than 20 hours of unseen footage was expected to show last January's violent traffic stop.

Atlanta is ready to build a sprawling new police and fire training complex. Opponents argue that it would further militarize officers and destroy precious green space.

YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio (WKBN) — A former East Liverpool police officer filed a civil rights suit Monday in federal court, alleging the city and department fired him for reporting on misconduct by fellow officers to the FBI.

The case offers a glimpse into the ways housing assessments are riddled with systemic racism, exacerbating inequalities

The U.S. Department of Justice is opposing a bipartisan panel's proposal to curtail federal judges' ability to impose longer prison sentences on criminal defendants based on conduct for which they were acquitted at trial.